317 of 846 polling booths identified as sensitive

The district administration is gearing up to conduct free and fair elections from 204 wards to urban local bodies (ULBs), including 65 to the Mysore City Corporation (MCC), Deputy Commissioner Rame Gowda said here on Tuesday.

Apart from the MCC, the four town municipal councils of Nanjangud (27 wards), Bannur (23), Hunsur (27) and K.R. Nagar (23), and the three town panchayats of T. Narsipur (11), Periyapatna (15) and H.D. Kote (13) will go to the polls on March 7.

According to Mr. Gowda, there are 1,071 candidates in the fray.

There are 7,62,671 voters in these wards.

A total of 846 polling booths (including auxiliary booths) will be set up. Of them, 317 booths have been identified as sensitive and 203 as hyper-sensitive.

For identification

Campaign came to a close at 7 a.m. on Tuesday. Sale of liquor has been banned within the ULB limits from 7 a.m. on Wednesday to 8 p.m. on Thursday, and again from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on March 11, when counting will be taken up.

A holiday has been declared for institutes where polling will take place.

Urs Boarding School, Baden Powell School and Maharani Arts and Science College are the mustering centres in Mysore, while JSS Pharmacy College, Maharani Arts and Science College and JSS College are where counting will be held.

City Commissioner of Police K.L. Sudheer said more than 1,600 police officials and staff would be on duty in the city, apart from 14 CAR parties, 12 Karnataka State Reserve Police platoons, three commando teams, 500 home guards and 250 police personnel and officers from Bangalore.

Two complaints of election malpractice had been registered, one at the K.R. Police station where a bundle of saris was seized, and another at Lashkar police station, about money being allegedly distributed to voters, Mr. Sudheer said.